In today's news round up, we have a ton of blue posts, a look at some PTR changes on the Darkmoon Faire, and most importantly, two preview videos by Lore of 5.2 raid encounters! Also check out the World of Warcraft Wireless Mouse over at ZAM.

5.2 PTR: Darkmoon Faire

We found a few small changes to the Darkmoon Faire this past month on the PTR. The stylish can now be obtained through several means:

Small chance to be found in , the new reward for completing Darkmoon Faire dailies.

0 from .

When you use the item, you initially summon a bunch of fireworks. For the duration of the buff, your character will appear to wear a fun purple hat. This hat periodically sparkles and has small fireworks.

There is another Darkmoon hat datamined, , which increases your fishing by +5 and has an on use effect () that summons a pool of Shipwrecked Debris and requires the Darkmoon Faire to be open. No word yet on what the source is.

5.2 Raid Videos

Triple Puncture: A brutal tri-horned strike that inflicts 462500 to 537500 Physical damage and increases the damage taken from Triple Puncture by 10% for 1 min. This effect stacks.

Double Swipe: Horridon swings his massive head and tail to and fro, inflicting 277500 to 322500 Physical damage to players in a 35-yard cone in front of and behind himself. This effect happens twice.

Charge: Horridon charges at a random player, performing a Double Swipe once he reaches their location.

Venom Bolt Volley: The Venomous Effusion unleashes a spray of vile toxins that inflicts 27750 to 32250 Nature damage to all enemies instantly, and 13875 to 16125 Nature damage every 3 sec for 1 min. This effect stacks.

Living Poison: When a Venomous Effusion is created, a pool of Living Poison forms beneath it. Living Poison inflicts 185000 to 215000 Nature damage to enemies within 4 yards every 0.5 sec and wanders around.

The Drakkari:War-God Jalak will call upon the Drakkari tribe to enter the arena third.

Risen Drakkari Warrior: Once called to action, Risen Drakkari Warriors pour from the Drakkari tribal door until it is destroyed.

Uncontrolled Abomination: The foul necromantic magics that animated the last remnants of the Drakkari tribe left them bereft of intelligence and purpose, causing the Risen Drakkari to attack random targets.

Risen Drakkari Champion: Once called to action, Risen Drakkari Champions pour from the Drakkari tribal door until it is destroyed.

Uncontrolled Abomination: The foul necromantic magics that animated the last remnants of the Drakkari tribe left them bereft of intelligence and purpose, causing the Risen Drakkari to attack random targets.

Drakkari Frozen Warlord: A total of three Drakkari Frozen Warlords will jump down from the arena stands once the Drakkari are called to action.

Mortal Strike: A powerful blow inflicts 300% weapon damage and leaves the player wounded, reducing the effectiveness of any healing received by 50% for 8 sec.

Frozen Orb: Summons an orb of frozen power that shoots a bolt of frost at a nearby enemy target every 0.5 sec, inflicting 185000 to 215000 Frost damage and slowing movement speed by 20% for 2 sec.

The Amani:War-God Jalak will call upon the Amani tribe to enter the arena last.

Amani'shi Protector: Once called to action, Amani'shi Protectors pour from the Amani tribal door until it is destroyed.

Amani'shi Flame Caster: Once called to action, Amani'shi Flame Casters pour from the Amani tribal door until it is destroyed.

Fireball: Hurls a ball of fire at a random player, inflicting 69375 to 80625 Fire damage.

Amani Warbear: A total of three Amani Warbears will jump down from the arena stands once the Amani are called to action.

Swipe: The warbear swipes with its claws, inflicting 83250 to 96750 Physical damage to players in a 0-yard cone.

Amani'shi Beast Shaman: Amani'shi Beast Shaman ride atop the powerful Amani Warbears and can be attacked once the Warbear has fallen.

Chain Lightning: The Beast Shaman calls upon the spirits of the storms to inflict 83250 to 96750 Nature damage to a player. Chain Lightning can jump to another player within 5 yards, affecting 3 total targets and increasing damage by 50% per jump.

Hex of Confusion: Hexes a player for 30 sec, giving them a 50% chance to injure themselves for 55500 to 64500 Physical damage when casting a spell or using an ability.

The Zandalari:War-God Jalak and his faithful Zandalari Dinomancers will come to the aid of Horridon during the battle.

Zandalari Dinomancer: Zandalari Dinomancers will jump down into the arena periodically.

Dino-Mending: The dinomancer channels a beam of healing energy at Horridon, healing 1% of Horridon's maximum health every 3 sec.

Dino Form: At 50% health, the dinomancer transforms into a powerful Devilsaur, increasing Physical damage dealt by 50% but preventing the dinomancer from casting Dino-Mending.

Orb of Control: When the Zandalari Dinomancer transforms, it drops its Orb of Control. A player can interact with the orb to temporarily dominate Horridon's mind, forcing the beast to charge into a tribal door. Destroying a tribal door prevents additional members of that tribe from entering the arena.

Headache: Charging into a tribal door gives Horridon a terrible headache, stunning him for 10 sec.

Cracked Shell: Horridon's shell cracks after ramming into a door, increasing damage taken by 50%. This effect stacks up to 4 times.

War-God Jalak: After all four tribes have been called, or when Horridon has been damaged below 30% health, War-God Jalak himself will enter the arena.

Molten Overload: When he reaches maximum molten energy, Ro'shak will overload and combust, casting Molten Inferno every 1 sec until he is degraded of molten energy.

Unleashed Flame: Ro'shak incinerates the largest cluster of enemies he can find, inflicting 600000 Fire damage split evenly among targets within 8 yards. Discharging this flame will relieve Ro'shak of 300 Molten Energy.There must be at least 3 targets clustered in order to get Ro'shak's attention.

Unleashed Flame: Ro'shak incinerates the largest cluster of enemies he can find, inflicting 600000 Fire damage split evenly among targets within 8 yards. Discharging this flame will relieve Ro'shak of 300 Molten Energy.There must be at least 5 targets clustered in order to get Ro'shak's attention.

Arcing Lightning: Quet'zal zaps a random player with Lightning, stunning them and causing them to shock nearby allies for 39000 to 41000 Nature damage. This effect jumps to nearby allies, causing them to also pulse with electricity.They are stunned until another player pulls them out of the storm.

Windstorm: Quet'zal pulls all players into the eye of a rushing windstorm. Players suffer 19500 to 20500 Nature damage every 1 second until they are able to exit the storm.Once the storm is over, some rushing winds will linger.

Ignite Cyclone: Iron Qon ignites a random cyclone, causing it to burn all players for 9250 to 10750 Fire damage every 2 sec.

Freeze Cyclone: Iron Qon freezes a random cyclone, causing it to entomb players in ice on contact. The player will take damage equal to 5% of their maximum health every 2 sec.

Click the cut to read Blizzard posts, including 5.2 reputation and class balance posts by Ghostcrawler!

5.2 Reputation Changes

There are several new ways to acquire reputation in Patch 5.2. Draztal has clarified some of the ways below. To recap:

Completing work orders on Sunsong Ranch will grant reputation with a faction.

You can now earn bonus reputation for your first dungeon and scenario of the day. You can select which reputation you choose to champion by selecting it from the reputation panel on the character screen.

Draztal

What I would love to see is more choices to farm the reputation for factions, deffo not a tabard again I agree on that! But mayby a choice between dailies and something else

For 5.2 you will be able to champion a faction and earn rep with them on your first heroic and scenario of the day.

So we can assume that only one dungeon or one scenario will earn you rep?

As the PTR Patch Notes read currently, it's the first dungeon and first scenario. Of course, things might change, but that's the plan right now.

The answer was/is so blooming obvious, you never had to re-invent the wheel, just put the old one back on - simply having both at release (instead of removing tabards) - Blizz could of scored a blinder by satisfying everyone - missed opportunity by not keeping tabards with the current daily system on release, missed it again in 5.1 and instead opt for a watered down fix in 5.2.

If one of them is the obvious path to get it done faster, the developers have seen over the years that the players will take that path, even if it's something they just don't like doing (which is probably why some people feel dailies are mandatory, because they'd like to spend their valor points on that gear rather than using the item upgrade system, perhaps because the'll spend them better there).

Also, keep in mind that in 5.2, valor gear will have a reputation requirement, but this reputation won't be earned from daily quests (which will also be available and it's a different faction).

Ghostcrawler: 5.2 Class Balance

Ghostcrawler

- Clarification on the : It means that if you have a proc up and hit , that will be a guaranteed crit, will consume the Proc, and the future Shadow detonation will also be a guaranteed crit. Basically, will function for , just like it already does for Frost Strike and Obliterate.- - Causes to deal additional Shadow damage to targets below 40% health (instead of 35%). Additionally, increases the crit chance of and its additional damage to low health targets.

Ghostcrawler

- range reduced back to 25 yards. (It was 30 yards in an earlier PTR build.)- - increases range by 5 yards (rather than 4 yards which was an odd number left over from when it was a % increase).- damage has been increased by 100%.- Feral PvP 2pc - now also increases duration by 1 sec.- Feral PvP glove - has changed. It now increases damage by 100%.- Balance / Restoration PvP glove - changes have been reverted and once again increases the range of by 5 yards.- Feral PvE 4 pc - now also affects and Swipe (in addition to Mangle, Shred and FB).- To explain our logic a bit more, we wanted to nerf the ability for PvP. The DR change is a big nerf, but we think it's important. We had previously experimented with increasing range or duration of , but were concerned those offset the intended nerf too much.Drop Skull Bash to 10 energy (currently 15), since we lost of the Glove bonus.

Skull Bash costs nothing on the PTR build. Kick too. That may have missed the patch notes.

Ghostcrawler

Could you please make the bonus work for (or even ) too?

We did so. I must have forgotten to mention it.

Ghostcrawler

- For Retribution, we were trying to emphasize what was once the most awesome spell in the Ret arsenal () while reacting to some of the initial feedback that the first set bonus wasn't exciting. As often happens in cases like this, the players who liked the first set bonus and not the second have now offered their feedback. I want to stress that when this happens it's not a poll or a contest to see who can yell the loudest. We evaluate the feedback we get, weigh the strengths of the various arguments, and come to a decision. For 5.2 we're going to go back to the initial 4 pc set bonus of sometimes hitting for Holy damage. I also want to stress that anyone expecting said bonus to be a 20% DPS increase or something are going to be disappointed, so I hope that's not why you liked the bonus. :)

Incorporating into the single-target rotation, sometimes, is still a neat idea and the kind of thing we might do as a glyph or something in the future.

Myself and many many many rets would be happy to just have these gimmics gone. Please?

We agree that it feels dumb and mandatory. We don't have a global solution to swapping set bonuses pre-pull, but we are trying to implement one. In the meantime, we have a list of specific set bonuses (including the two you mentioned) to discourage for pre-pull.

Ghostcrawler

I'll be really frank here. I don't think the group portion of the heal is long for this world. I personally dig it and I feel smart when I see 5 people in a group all at once who need healing. It makes the spell different from other AEs.

On the other hand, it's pretty gamey. (I can only heal these five arbitrary people, why?) Priests feel like they have to ask raid leaders to set up groups with their weird AE spell in mind, which is really unlikely to happen in Raid Finder. It doesn't work at all on encounters like the shrines in Sha of Fear.

We're not going to change it for 5.2. We're probably not going to change it for 5.3. But I sense the writing on the wall here that it won't last much longer. I can imagine a future iteration where is the AE equivalent of Gheal and is the AE equivalent of . (Yes, I know Disc doesn't have - I'm in a really theoretical space here.)

Sorry. I broke my own rule about simple questions and answers. Sometimes I can't help it.At the moment (which could still change) Rapture provides a 25% cheaper and a 150% mana return on a . When we tried PW:S at 50%, it became too efficient to use nothing but . We aren't trying to kill use completely, just shift to a balance where and SS are used for absorbs, and is used for healing. Yes, Disc will be weaker than Holy , but that is offset by the incredible benefit brought by absorbs. Please don't interpret this as "Because absorbs are so good and because absorbs are my thing, it is a design failure if I ever cast an actual heal."

Ghostcrawler

- PvP gloves - changed to increase healing by by 1% of health.

Ghostcrawler

4 pc - now increases from all spells by 10% (up from 5% on certain spells).

Ghostcrawler

In PvE particularly, we think it's better when players use their utility to help the group at large rather than balking because it's a personal DPS loss to do so. In PvP, you can make more of an argument that choosing to spend resources on an interrupt or on an attack is an interesting trade-off, but the fact is that many interrupts were already free (or so cheap as to be effectively free). There are exceptions to utility being free. for example is not, but it also has no cooldown so were it also free it might as well be passive (or macro'd) because you wouldn't be making a decision about when to use it.Um, the revert on the mastery changes, haste back down to 50% (though haste isn't very good for us anyway and is more a fury buff), and the rage cost on OP are all going backwards for arms DPS. I hope there's more changes coming? As it stands we would do far less in 5.2 compared to what we do on live now.

Tuning DPS numbers is one of the last things we do, because it's dependent on all of the other changes being stable. The problems we are trying to solve now are stuff like "How to make Arms use Slam more?" and "How to make rage matter?" Once we get those issues resolved, we can tune up all of the numbers at once (because we'd agree Arms is a little low in PvE).- We were concerned that our buffs to haste and mastery were enough to get Arms warriors to regem or be angry about passing on drops to say DKs. That's not the goal. We just wanted to make some of the stats better. We think the changes to for Arms already make mastery slightly better for them, so we are reverting the change back to 55% for Strikes of Opportunity. (It was 75% in an earlier PTR build.) We also reduced the haste buff from +100% to +50%. It's still a big increase over live.- Similarly, we were concerned that the changes to devalued expertise too much for Arms. We changed the granted by dodge to 1 charge. It's still 2 for using . However, we also reverted an earlier change that let proc even if the missed.

LFR Loot System

Bashiok

The LFR loot system works as intended, but I think the rub is the expectations it sets. For traditional raiding you get together with your guildies and friends, you struggle on bosses, wipe after wipe, and finally through teamwork and perseverance you overcome the obstacle, loot drops, and even if you don't win a roll you feel like you've made a meaningful contribution to your team and your chances at success later through the overall gearing up of your raid group. In LFR the entire dynamic has to change because you're being matched up with a bunch of strangers. Because of that there is no feeling of helping your team get better, you enter the queue alone and it's mainly about personal goals to gear up, to then maybe help you in coordinated raids later. You're in there for loot for yourself, not to help the 24 other strangers gear up, and because of that there's less tolerance for overcoming obstacles, so encounters are much easier, and the loot system is per-person and not a communal distribution.

As others have noted the chance to get items in LFR versus a traditional raid scenario are actually higher, but that doesn't change the expectations of people jumping into LFR that this should be a system that provides more consistency. Whatever the underlying reason is for that, I'm not totally sure it matters beyond there is an expectation difference between traditional raiding and LFR. It's something we're keeping an eye on for potential tweaks in the future. We have tech for quests that increases your chance for a quest item to drop if you haven't gotten one recently, and so that's something we're at least beginning to think about and how that kind of consistency system could translate into things like the LFR. If nothing else tweaking drop rates on prior tiers when a new tier hits is pretty low hanging fruit on at least ensuring people can more easily get those last few ilvls so they can queue for the new tier.

Ghostcrawler on Twitter

Ghostcrawler

What do you think about including some in the LFR consolation bag?As we said in some of the 5.1 interviews, we plan on putting some better goodies in the consolation bag. (View Source)

Saw the rogue pvp glove change. It helps and I like it. Can we test the sets on PTR?Being able to try out all the sets on the PTR is a goal. It won't be in the next build or so, but we'd like to get there. (View Source)

With the removal of blanket silences and abilities that were being used to quickly end games, what was the mindset with ROP?We knew monks needed something serious to get a toehold in PvP. Doubt the current RoP will be the shipping one though. (View Source)

댓글

BahamutBBob의 댓글

on 2013-01-18T12:49:18-06:00

I wonder why they decided to add a new rep for VP gear. At least, it sounds to me like they added a new rep for VP gear. I hope we get exalted with it just from doing the 5.2 story, instead of having to grind it out from raiding or something just as inaccessible to non raiders.

For the record, I hated having to grind rep originally just to buy VP gear. I would have gotten around to all of them eventually anyway, and I have, but why lock VP gear away like that? You already have to invest a lot of time to earn the VP to buy the gear, why make us invest more just to get the rep up to buy the gear? It feels to me like MoP has been all about time. Making us invest more time for the same stuff, so that we give them more money in the end.

gerakios의 댓글

on 2013-01-18T13:41:45-06:00

I hope we get exalted with it just from doing the 5.2 story, instead of having to grind it out from raiding or something just as inaccessible to non raiders.

One of the previous news posts confirmed that it is raiding related, similar to the Avengers of Hyjal. I think they are also adding in a second non-raid related rep, and will edit as I find the links.

Join the Shado-Pan Assault in their singular drive to see Lei Shen, The Thunder King defeated once and for all, and gain access to impressive Valor reward items. Reputation with this faction can be earned only within the Throne of Thunder raid dungeon.

oxidiser의 댓글

on 2013-01-18T13:47:58-06:00

Yup. All that did for me was to lock out all that gear. I don't have a lot of time to play most days so I ended up going the most efficient route of getting decent gear. So when I first entered LFR I had like 2 pieces of heroic gear, 1 or 2 pieces of crafted gear and everything else was pvp gear. Doesn't seem optimal but it worked and didn't require me to grind dailies (which I detest).

Wirxaw의 댓글

on 2013-01-18T16:31:24-06:00

Soul Reaper? Seriously? Warriors have one of the highest possible burst in game, and in the end about 20-30% of their damage comes from execute, which is a spammable ability that replaces normal rotation.

Soul Reaper is a delayed, missable, runecosting ability(that messes up rotation), which has a CD, and deals so subpar damage that it is more viable than Obliterate by a small margin of single rune requirement. Obliterate crit - 200k, Soul Reaper initial crit - 50k, final - 200-230k.Since most fights have a short window of 35%> duration, normally you will be using not more than 10 Soul Reapers. Which is maybe 1-2mil more damage, that is if you have enough runes to properly use them without ruining rotation(unlikely), you don't miss any of them(by any chances) and you do not stop the application.I surely am glad that now I will feel safe to see a KM proc in 35% window and know that if I use SR, I will not have KM overwritten during GCD. However, buffing something so miserable, while there are serious problems with TH rotation...Does it really imply that all dks must again go DW and just spam whatever pops up? Or well, four with this tier bonus.Spending whole bonus just to make an inferior ability somewhat noticeable, while other classes get things like 2p shaman bonus... How much more hate can dk dps get?

Lolus의 댓글

on 2013-01-18T18:15:16-06:00

My guess is VP rep is finally coming from raiding, since people who do LFR or dungeons don't need VP gear at all. Now people finally can't complaint about dailies since they won't give you access to new epics, they will be purely optional for some goods and mounts

Fangnir의 댓글

on 2013-01-21T14:37:56-06:00

damn it ghost crawler! ...... let us turn in more lesser charms per week for more greater charms ;/ .... and also fix blood dks for pvp again... they DO NOT need so many self heals. EVER.

would be gratefull if someone else would relay this to the proper section lol

Dropz의 댓글

on 2013-01-21T15:04:13-06:00

Oo.. I'm really looking forward to wearing that beast-DM hat :DFurthermore the reputation changes will hopefully silence most of the "Have to finish dailyhub X in order to do Y,Z" Looking forward to this! :)